New U.S. immigration rules spur more visa approvals for STEM workers

Having worked in the EU and the US, here are some differences that I think are relevant for global employers:

- The hiring pool is much smaller than in the US, one reason is probably demographics and lack of skilled immigration. This makes it less attractive to hire/grow there.

- Labor regulation is much more strict. It's legally hard and expensive to lay off workers in Germany, for example.

- Taxes are much higher than in the US, so even if employers spend a lot of money on payroll, much less of it will end up in employees checking accounts.

- Demand is much lower. Tech industry in Europe is definitely there, but not booming to the same degree as in the US.

I would love to see a revamp of visa system that when someone is sponsored by companies they are required to do a 1:1 match for scholarships on the salary of someone who they are sponsoring. Alternatively make the minimum $100k or max $250k.

As someone who had someone come over on a O-1 visa, I 100% would have been willing to pay double for that person specifically.

It also removes the common issue of people who are hiring people below market rate or are trying to push salaries down for certain industries. It makes companies really make sure they actually need that technical expert from overseas.

Then open it up to everyone else if there are quotas.

> 2. Lowering wages. Restricted immigration actually lowers wages. Why? Because it allows employs to pay undocumented workers less. Poultry farms are an excellent example of this. They pay undocuemnted workers less. If they ever start making noise about wages or conditions, you clear them out by calling in an ICE raid, pay a nominal fine, rinse and repeat.

This only happens because there is no policing of companies exploiting undocumented workers. I've seen wages lowered time and time again in various industries due to the exploitation of undocumented workers. I've seen it in the restaurant industry, construction, trades, cleaning services, etc.

https://chicago.eater.com/2017/11/29/16716666/mcdonalds-bake...

I wish I could find the articles that came out about this at the time- but the bakery was reported by employees, mainly black employees that were losing their jobs to the illegals and experiencing pay cuts. The company complains about losing 21 million- bc they had to start paying fair wages to get actual citizens to work. I understand your sentiment- that if there is no pay gap between undocumented workers and citizens- then the wages should go up- but in reality- you just doubled the labor pool, so wages will not go up. I also agree- we should be blaming the capital owners for this- but my opinion is that capital owners write the laws and that's why enforcement on undocumented labor is non-existent.

You should try the Australian immigration process.

I would be surprised if it didn't, as other parts of the immigration system also warp post graduate education. EB-2 provides a much easier immigration route than EB-3, and EB-1 is easier still: Arguably the only road you can call easy if you come from countries that hit the per-country cap. The most reliable way to EB-2 is post graduate education. For EB-1, as listed here, will be patents and publications after a Ph.D.

So now you go look at your typical STEM department at a good US university. As you go into masters and Phds, the percentage of foreign students goes up. This isn't because most international students love academia: It's because the immigration system, as described earlier, just makes the piece of paper they hand you so much more valuable that it'd be for someone that is already a US citizen. And since it's especially valuable for students from visa-capped countries, guess what? Students from those countries are disproportionally going through that route.

If we cut the visa limits, and said that a STEM degree and some STEM employment after was a guarantee for a green card in 2 years, I'd expect the number of international students that pick that route to plummet. The disparity between the demand for green cards and the visa limit is so wide, every year the incentive to study longer just increases.

If none of those numbers change, I'd expect that the patent route will just be pushed further. So just like the visa caps are a subsidy for post graduate degrees, this rule clarification will be an implicit subsidy for patent attorneys. Then we'll have yet another set of people with a lot to lose if we raise the visa limits, or stop the per-country quotas.